Story:The End of Eternity/E19
XIX White clouds let fall white rain, and puddles formed on the black sand with color only slightly more opulent than the tears of an angel. No wind blew through this planet and no stars lit through the dark pink sky. No birds flew through the air, no insects crawled through the sand, and no sunlight lit the husk of the world. There was no life. There was no death. Eternity walked through the sand, his entire body covered with black celestial fabric. His feet shifted through the sand and left black footprints that faded away only moments after he made another step. He could not leave his mark on the world, not this way. Not at all. All around him rose shuddering towers and buildings with broken windows, broken memories and broken manifestations in the illusion of his reality, all made of black sand and black stone. Sharp, minimalistic peaks and tips of spires and roofs lay scattered about the sand, as common as boulders. They were of a faded gray coloration, monotone and uniform, but the black sand coated each object so heavily that they looked as if they were of the same construction. Only by wiping at the broken artifacts of architecture could one see that they were not made of the same stuff as the earth. Only by peeling away the outer layer could one see that the left behind world was more of a dilapidated fantasy than it appeared to be. Eternity aimlessly passed through what remained of a city, faded and forgotten buildings and ruins strewn about him carelessly. The buildings and homes had been empty for so long, yet they had a strange, lingering void within them, as if they were only recently vacated. Their gutted insides were empty and dripping with white rain drops. There were no possessions to be found inside, no more to be found anywhere. Outside the houses, Eternity walked silently past his sentinels. They stood and sat and slept by the entrances of the houses, on top of rooftops, on the walls of spires and towers. They never moved. In their hands were weapons, and grains of sand, and skulls. None of their hands were idle or left open. They were made of pure white glass, so strongly composed that they were translucent and durable – but fragile to the touch. Their sightless clear eyes looked forward or were covered by white eyelids. None of them moved out of their positions or said anything, or even swung their weapons. They were purely decorative, created and purported only for aesthetic purposes. Eternity hated having to look at them. He could not feel anger or resentment, but he hated them all the same. They were all his creations, forged from his power in the image of people he once knew. A living person had not graced his vision for a long, long time. He had long ago lost count of the seconds that passed in this world without time or light. The sentinels were little more than transparent statues, glass failures that reflected his own mistakes back at him. He wanted them to be made of and covered by pure black substance, like himself and the earth. He wanted flesh to cover their muscles and bones to structure them. He had all the power in the world, time had long ago stopped and started and stopped again within his breast, and all once living souls had the ability to reform with his will, but he could not bring himself to do it. He could not bring himself to create more than a fragile, flawed picture of life. It was because he knew that he had to be alone. He did not try to handicap himself or his creations, but every time he waved his hand at the earth and a statue formed from the sands, he knew that it was his own soul perpetuating his solitude. Living was a mistake. Creating was a mistake. But none of them were mistakes he regretted. No, everything had been done for a reason. He was here, alone, for a reason. It had been so long since the sun faded and the moon crumbled and the chains broke and the gates opened. It had been so long since he awoke upon the dead earth… But he still remembered everything as vividly as ever. He could never forget the reason why he was here, forever and ever, and the covenant that had been made. He walked past the outskirts of the city, allowing its ruins to fade away into the horizon behind him. Silhouettes of his sentinels yielded shadows that danced upon the black sand, reaching for Eternity as he and his back-length mane of silver hair abandoned them once again. He knew exactly where every city was in the world, and just how large and destroyed each was. Some of them had been swallowed up by the stagnant of the white waves and some had been uncovered by the receding sea, but he had explored them all many times over. Initially he had used the statues to recreate the visions of civilization he had in the fringes of his memory, once he got over the frustration of being unable to truly synthesize life. With simple flicks of his fingers and mental commands, he formed black sand into translucent white glass and barren earth into barren populations. The cities he created were no better than the ones he experienced before, with people endlessly toiling in their jobs, abandoning their loved ones, their love, themselves, and the earth they were made of. Even though his people were statues, watchmen, unmoving pictures taken of a lively and forgotten film, they were no more less alive than the people he once knew. Eternity could not breathe life into any structure, and even the shadows of dwellers he managed to build were flawed. Even his dreams were flawed. When he realized this, he destroyed every sentinel he ever made in a disappointed act of mercy. From their ashes and the black sands beneath them, he built new statues. He gave them weapons in their hands, and did not allow the statues to be made inside the buildings or the towers. They were guards, worthless sentries to protect his worthless and ethereal memories. He walked up the lip of a hill. To his left splashed the shores of the endless beach that was met by the endless white sea; to his right stretched the darkness, on and on until it met and merged with the dark pink sky; behind him lay a city of translucent bones and unmoving dancers to the tune of nonexistence; in front of him, behind a path created by six long-forgotten seals with long-forgotten glyphs emblazoned into the sand, rose a castle of complete black stone. Incomplete buttresses, broken balconies, cracked columns, and shattered windows were all made of the same unshifting black stone. The doors of the castle were open, and inside he could only see shadow. A frown tugged on Eternity’s pale white skin as he started towards the castle. He had chocolate brown skin once, as did every other living being, back when genetics and mixed races had an effect on his appearance. Now he was shaped only by time, and the lack of it. His hair had gone silver with age before the exile even began, and it flowed behind him onto his back. Below the hair flowed a dark black cape, an attachment to his form-fitting void black garment. The cape came and went with his will, but the clothes on his skin were a prison he could not escape from. They were his prison now. Each of the seven seals, as wide as the circumference of a castle length, looked to be carved into the sands with bright golden light. Where each seal stood, a castle of white had once stood. He had explored them all and found nothing inside but more emptiness and more memories. Even the seventh seal, facing him where the other six were at his sides, was one of these. Now its stone had turned black, and its insides were opaque to him. The other castles had vanished, their seals broken. Something had changed. Eternity stepped inside, his footsteps silent on the dark sand-stone of the castle. The interior was initially no more visible to him than it was before he entered, but after a moment his eyes adjusted. He turned near the door and rubbed a thin hand on the wall. No dark grit came off onto his fingers; this was not a building that existed before the crumbling of the world. The black on these walls was not made from accumulated sand. He heard a noise, and his head jolted to a staircase shrouded in darkness to his right. The noise was unfamiliar, unnatural even – because it was natural. Light footsteps danced down the staircase, and radiant light seemed to come down with them, until he could clearly see the small little girl standing at the bottom of the stairs. Both of them stared at each other with wide eyes. It was almost impossible to believe. There was a little girl in front of him, staring at him in the seventh castle of the seal, and she was alive. Her chest moved slightly as she breathed in and out, in and out. He did not need to breathe anymore. She blinked in surprise, her cheeks reddening with heat. He did not need to blink, and although they had the same shade of unnatural white skin, his did not have any life moving beneath it. She wore a thin dress of light milky white color, the same color as the rain and the seas, and over it she had a faded and tattered gray cloak ran behind her shoulders. Long, unkempt black hair was the only mar to her otherwise fragile white canvas, although her wide, trembling eyes were a shining red. “Who are you?” the girl asked. Eternity shivered. It had been so long since he had heard a voice, or any sound that was human. It had been so long since he had seen something alive. The girl did not wait long for him to respond. After looking him up and down, she tilted her head at his silence and looked in his eyes with childish ignorance. “You’re not a bad guy, are you?” The frown tightened on Eternity’s deathless skin. It had been so long since he even thought of the terms ‘good’ or ‘evil’. What human concepts they were, and how foreign they were to him now! “No,” he answered with a hoarse voice. It was not a lie, yet it was not yet the truth. The child nodded and started walking towards him with bare feet. “I thought so! Come on, let’s get away from here. It’s so dark and scary here.” She grabbed his hand, clad in the dark clothes of his exile, and started pulling him back towards the entrance. “Your hands are so cold, mister,” she complained. Eternity had nothing to say, other than to observe that her hands were warm. Warmer than he could ever remember being. Once they left the castle, she let go of his hand and ran forward, her toes digging into the black sand. “It’s so pretty out here!” She breathed. Eternity stepped outside onto the sand and tilted his head slightly. “Have you not been outside before, child? Where did you come from?” His mouth did not need to move for him to speak, but he decided to follow the human animation in order to keep the girl from fearing him. Why was he worrying about keeping this child from disliking him? The girl looked down and started digging her toes into the sand. “I don’t know, mister.” As if eager to change the subject, her neck swiveled as she turned to look around from the unmoving twilight sky to the barely undulating seas and even the earth beneath her. Somehow, those red eyes of hers found beauty in a skeleton of a planet, ruins built upon ashes and blood lapping up onto corpses. “Where are we, mister?” she asked innocently. Asking him that was the same as asking whose fantasy the two were appearing in, or what fantasies could he come up with to flesh out the dead skeleton of a world that she was a tourist in. Then, “Whom created that which we see?” was a better phrasing of her question to him. Or, “Who was it that created all this? Whose consciousness perpetuates it as an existence? Whose fantasy are we aware in?” He had no answer for her. Eternity only started walking, past the branded seals and out into the barren world. After a moment of staring, the girl followed. She hummed, or sang light tunes, or played with his long hair as it trailed behind him, but did not speak to him for some time. She only followed, often times running ahead to gawk at ruins they passed or to play in the white water. Mountains of sand, forgotten and faded words, stumps of past lives, dust flowing upon dead winds: the child found a way to enjoy all of them. She discovered new observations in every corner, stopped to stare and gasp at what Eternity had long ago grown accustomed to feeling apathetic for. The child brought life with her, brightening the environment and bringing sound back to the empty halls and corridors of the ruins. She followed him and led him, and Eternity only continued to suspire. She loved the statues, after a time of adjustment. They frightened her initially, and Eternity comforted her with his presence. When she noticed the weapons in the hands of the statues, she grew fearful again; so he manifested his long blade into his left hand, the hand of creation, and showed her how sharp it was. When this did not satisfy her anxieties, he tapped a statue with his right hand, the hand of destruction, and the statue shattered into black sand. It flittered away upon the nonexistent wind and joined the earth and its remnants, and she began to laugh at the carcasses. How amusing it was to her. To life, Eternity soon learned, the hopeless ideals and reflections of a mere imitation was simply a plaything, something to fear out of ignorance before laughing at and eventually invalidating through destruction. But were all things not reflections? He barely spoke to her as they walked across the world. To speak would bring up sensations and feelings of humanity that he did not want to re-experience more than he had to. Although he held all of time within his breast, he knew not how long the two walked, and the girl never seemed to age or hunger. She drank the milky white water and this seemed enough to sustain her thin body. No sun rose and no light dominated the pink sky, but after hours of exploration the girl would begin to yawn and slow down. He would manifest a cape of black cosmic fabric for her to sleep beneath, and he stood above her as she slept, guarding her against the shadows of his own creation. Her chest lightly rose and fell with her breath as she slept. Her lips were always left slightly ajar, and sometimes saliva fell from them onto the sand beneath her. He did not allow her to sleep inside the architectural carcasses of the world, and she had no issue with this as long as he stood vigil over her every time she rested. Eternity could not look upon the girl for long, or the void where his heart was would start to ache. Did he have that now, when he never did before – a heart? All he knew was that deep within his chest a pain throbbed, duly and quietly but growing with magnitude with each second she shivered in her sleep. He would always look away, and frown. She was making him feel something. It was as if he felt everything, and nothing. “Everything and nothing.” The words were whispered, spoken quietly only to fade away into the darkness of a world without wind. His throat vibrated as he spoke; this sensation of movement within his body had been forgotten long ago. How long? “A while, perhaps, or even forever.” Whose question was he answering? Whom was waiting for the answer? Eventually the child would awake and yawn and rub her eyes, and sit beneath his cape for minutes. Sometimes she would cry, and Eternity had no words to comfort her, so he manifested his long blade and let her place a hand on its hilt. That always soothed her. Afterwards, it was back to traveling. He had no destination in mind; all of the world was known to him. On the other hand, the girl seemed to have the horizon as her destination, considering how passionately she raced toward it. What was she looking for? What was she looking at? Eternity had a feeling that they were not seeing the same thing; where she saw fascination, life, and discovery, he saw only death, specters, ruination, and defeat. Could there be victory in defeat? Could there be life in death? “She’d like it here,” the girl would say sometimes. Whenever she muttered this, the words seemed to slip unexpectedly from her mouth. With her tone and her sudden stillness, it was as if the words had been implanted in her. It was impossible to believe a child could hold such strong sorrow and melancholy, or show such a strong wanderlust, yet she proved this belief wrong countless times with the way she spoke. “I bet he would, too.” “Of whom do you speak?” Eternity would always ask. He never turned to look at the girl, because she never responded. There was no indication that any time had passed since the two of them first met until Eternity noticed that the girl’s body was beginning to waste away and rot. Her bones grew pronounced beneath her sunken skin. Her long black hair grew stringy, coarse, and started to shed. Her eyes grew bags beneath them, and she slept more. Laughs danced from behind her lips less often, and smiles wrinkled her face rarely. The girl was dying. How long had they been traveling? Years? Days? Millennia? Eternity could know the time of anything instantly, could use and manipulate time as if it were a spool of string, but it was pointless. He did not bother. What purpose would being observant of time have, if not to prolong and agonize his exile? Eternity and the girl left a ruined building sinking into the sand and started walking once more. She no longer ran, not anymore. “Take me to the castle, please, mister.” She coughed, and her light frame shook with the action. Afterwards, she looked up, black bangs obscuring her forehead and wide red eyes trembling. It looked as if tears were going to fall from her eyes. That look she had on was so fragile, so tauntingly mortal, that it was saddening. It would have been saddening, once. Eternity only nodded, and the two started to walk towards the horizon. They passed a crumbled temple with broken idols and collapsed stone columns. She looked up at it as they walked by. It had been a while since she ran somewhere to observe it, and even longer since she showed any wonder for them. “What are those buildings there for, mister?” “Temples, child. They were built for worship.” “Worship? What’s that? How do you do it in a building?” She didn’t often ask questions, but when she did the child became very inquisitive and in-depth. It would have annoyed him, once. “The same way we explore in this world.” He knew that his words were borderline meaningless to the girl, but Eternity couldn’t keep himself from waxing them anyway. He had been alone for a long time, so long that his thoughts were no longer discernable or sensible all of the time, not even to himself. There was so much to see in the world, yet so little to truly appreciate. He imagined there might have been a strange beauty to a land of nonexistence, as much as the concept of nothingness could lend to beauty, but he could not bring himself to see it. Not when he knew that it was flawed, a mere mirror of what was. The ruin of a ruin. They were getting closer to the seven seals and the castle. He did not know how long it would be until they arrived nor how long it was that they started to walk towards it, but the girl continued to degrade. The top towers of the final black castle were just visible beyond a far-off hill as the girl lay down to rest. Eternity looked upon her in her sleep and wondered if her body would survive until they arrived at the castle. What was he expecting to find there? Where had she come from, and where would she return to? How could life thrive here, in a world without time, without air or blue water or green soil or other voices to hear? Perhaps she couldn’t thrive here, not truly, and that was why her body was degrading. Would she fade away into the wind, like all of his other creations? Was she a creation of his? The vanished embodiment of time frowned. How could there still exist mysteries and unfamiliar concepts in the world he sustained with his own nonexistence? The girl stirred in her sleep. One of her eyes squinted open and the other stayed clench shut to keep the everlasting twilight out of her sleep-addled vision. “Mister,” she whispered with a quiet, smoky voice, “How long is forever?” His eyes narrowed with a tugging in his chest. A feeling unfamiliar to him clogged his throat. “It goes by you slow enough to grind the meat off your bones,” Eternity answered, “But just when you begin to comprehend it, all of it disappears in the blink of an eye.” She nodded with satisfaction with this answer and closed her eye. A shiver shook her frail and small body before she returned to sleep. Eternity gazed over her with awe. How long was she sleeping? He wondered. Was he watching her waste away? Would she crumble into dust before his very eyes, a moment passing for him but a thousand years for her? His right hand, cloaked in all darkness, reached forward towards her. He was curious, completely unable to comprehend her, but remembered that his right hand was the hand of destruction. Humanity was like the sands of time; as soon as he reached out to grasp it, he knew it would crumple and scatter within his grip. He would destroy her if he ever touched her. So Eternity drew back and turned away at the swelling within his breast, standing forward to stare at the horizon behind them and the shadows of his sentinels dancing on the hills of the world. She awoke without incident. There were no tears when she awoke this time, and she did not reach out to hold onto his blade. The girl was wide awake as soon as she rose, and her eyes showed no wonder for the world around her. That was new. When she set off towards the castle, Eternity following, he noted that she seemed determined. Resigned. They did not exchange words anymore as they walked. They did not have to. The two of them had spoken their last physical conversation when she had awoken from her sleep, and with the looks they shared when she woke, there was no more talking to be had until they arrived at the destination. Eternity knew what was happening to her; it was to be expected. She knew, as well. They both knew, and they both spoke without speaking. She stopped him in front of the castle. Her tiny feet plodded forward in the sand as she looked up to Eternity. “You can’t come inside, mister.” Eternity looked past her. Inside the castle, he could still see only shadow – shadow, and a coffin. It was for her, he knew. Inside the open coffin, a bed of roses awaited her. “Mortality does not exist for me.” “Please!” The girl’s pleading eyes seemed to sparkle at his dead ones. “I don’t want you in there.” He frowned. “Shall I tell you a story, then? Before you go to meet them?” His mouth did not move as he spoke. The girl knew he was talking of the two people she missed – the ones who would enjoy the shattered world. She nodded, and sat down with her legs crossed. Eternity took this opportunity to flaunt some of his celestial power, and he crossed his legs as well as he sat on an invisible chair some feet in the air. “Before the world began and after it ended, there was once a large and beautiful school, and within this school thousands of students lived and studied. They worked hard, seeking to further their knowledge and cement their place in the world. Many of them became so caught up in their work that they lost sight of the environment and peers around them. So many of them became so focused on their advancements and learning that they ceased careful living on the campus beneath them. There were a hundred students at the most elite and productive dorm of the academy. Each of their names were known to their respective communities, and each of them were destined to a life of legend. They pushed themselves into the realm of advancement, and through a mishap with their most heralded discoveries, they set their building ablaze. All of the students tried to save their work, and all of them burned alive in the building because of it. Afterwards, there were students who remembered and immortalized these dead students; not out of respect, but from jealousy that they could not be with them in their success. They continued the work of the students with earnest, eventually surpassing the results of the elites, and made themselves legends. The only other group of students looked back at the dead scholars with honor and love, and within their rose-colored vision the true scholars disappeared.” The child looked up at Eternity’s eyes, confused and in thought. Finally, she asked: “What does all of that mean? What happened to the rest of the students? Didn’t they remember the dead people?” Allowing his feet to land on the sand again, Eternity stood to his full height before answering. “The point is that only those blessed with happy memories can reminisce on the past. Only those without a fulfilling past can hope for a bright future. And none of them can ever hold onto the ephemeral yet eternal present. A promise cannot be made unless it is never broken… A love consummated can never be forgotten… A broken clock can never be incorrect.” She did not stand, not just yet. Puzzlement was clearly visible on the child’s young yet drawn face. “Nostalgia…” She said, tossing the words out into the stagnant atmosphere as if testing a new word she found on its surface. “Melancholia…?” Eternity nodded, and allowed his lips to move as he spoke. “You’re finally starting to understand. Memories cannot be identities. Dreams cannot be reality.” He looked down at her with contemplative eyes. There looked to be an air of sadness or sorrow around him; but he felt nothing. He was nothing. Yet there was still something he himself could not understand… The child stood, nodding with wisdom beyond her years. She looked up to Eternity with a knowing smile, as if she could sense his turmoil and ignorance. “Mister, do you know what forever actually is?” The guardian of sands looked at her without responding. “We aren’t so different, y’know!” she continued. “You don’t always say what you mean. But you can do it, I promise!” Eternity looked over her once more, and saw that her body was gaunter than it was the last he observed her. The smile she gave him looked almost… painful. “You can’t look,” she said with a childish, jovial tone that seemed to almost betray her weakening body. Her red eyes trembled and seemed to water. “The sand won’t fall if you’re staring at it!” Eternity looked behind the girl once more, and saw a tall black throne where the coffin once was. Roses lay in front of the steps leading to the luxurious chair. He nodded, the gears beginning to turn in his head, and turned away from her. “I won’t die, mister, I promise! Remember the promise? The seal will close, but I won’t vanish. I’ll just be gone, away and into the next world!” Her voice trembled, yet she was attempting to reassure him, who could feel no emotion. ‘Lies,’ Eternity thought in the vast plane of his mind and time. ‘All that lives must die. It is impossible to exist anywhere but here, because I control all, and all has ended.’ Her footsteps walked steadily away from him, and Eternity’s eyes widened. He realized what she was saying. The promise. The questions. The wonder. He was supposed to remember her. He was supposed to remember all of it. He was forgotten, and his existence was law; it did not exist. It would be remembered by no one other than himself. “A clock broken is correct indefinitely.” Eternity understood. He turned, and the seventh castle and the seal beneath it had disappeared. All of the other six seals had vanished, as had the glyphs within them, replaced by black sand and black sand and more black sand. Everlasting inexistence took over where they once were and erased all memory of them, as it would for everything. There was one thing that time could not erase, and Eternity understood that now. He slowly put his hands, devoid of any shackles, into the pockets of his cosmic shell and looked towards the horizon, in front of which once stood a black castle and six seals and a little girl with black hair and red eyes. The black sand hid his black-clad feet as he started to walk down the shore, voyeur to all that was. He explored the beach of nothingness alone and thought only of his eternal sacrifice. Eternity took a moment as he walked, and allowed time to flow in his consciousness. A second passed, then another, then an hour, then a thousand years, and still he walked. Still he watched. Still he remembered. He had no soul, yet it flourished. He had no love, but he still remembered. He did not exist, not anymore, but he relished in his salvation, and smiled. There was plenty of time now, he knew, time enough to breathe and end and allow all to fade away. A final set of black tears fell from his dead eyes, and he smiled. He understood. "I will not forget you."